Bread crumbs have been generally produced by baking bread according to conventional yeast leavening procedures, allowing the bread to stale then comminuting the stale loaf to the desired particle size. The time required for staling is normally about 1 to 3 days, necessitating a large storage space for the loaves while staling occurs, and the rehandling of the same.
The use of gaseous materials such as carbon dioxide for leavening of bread has also been suggested. U.S. Pat. No. 3,041,176 by Baker, discloses the use of continuous mixers in combination with added gaseous materials. The introduction of gas as disclosed by Baker is used to raise the dough in subsequent baking to avoid the use of any yeast or ferment.
Because of the time required and the number of steps needed to make conventional bread crumbs, several attempts were made to streamline the process making it less time consuming and more economical. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,364,961 by Darley et al. Discloses a continuous process for manufacturing a bread crumb-like product wherein the farinaceous product-forming components are mixed in an extruder with carbon dioxide, or other gas or mixture of gases under critical conditions, to form a gas-leavened dough. The extruded dough is then comminuted to form discrete dough particles which are exposed to hot air to dry the surface of the particles and to stabilize the structure, then dried to the desired moisture content. Also U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,480 by Dyson et al. discloses baking and expanding the gas leavened dough to form a baked bread product which has the characteristic of a stale bread. The overall procedure in the above references requires only a short period of time, when compared to conventional baking processes and staling procedure.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,440,793 by Masao Seki discloses a method for producing bread crumbs comprising forming an essentially yeast-free mixture obtained by adding 0.5-6.0% soy bean protein to wheat flour and mixing therein, salt, fats, emulsifier, pH adjuster, coloring matter and flavoring material as secondary material, adding .alpha.-converted starch to the mixture, adding water thereto, and thereafter heating and pressing the mixture by an extruder to extrude the mixture into a rope-like configuration. The rope-like material is drawn from the die of the extruder at a speed greater than the extrusion speed in order to produce bubbles in the rope-like materials. The material is then flattened, cut, crushed and dried. The above reference produces a bread crumb-like product within 8 hours when compared to conventional processes which would have taken up to 36 hours.
None of the above cited references disclose a single continuous process to produce bread crumb-like pieces which simulate both the internal and external sections of a bread simultaneously.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to significantly reduce the period of time required to efficiently produce bread crumbs.
Another object of the present invention is to produce a bread crumb-like piece simulating the internal portion of bread;
A further object of the present invention is to produce a bread crumb-like piece simulating the external portion of bread.
Still another object of the present invention is to develop a single continuous process for producing bread crumb-like pieces simulating both the internal and external portion of bread simultaneously.